Celebrated on the seventeenth day of the month of June, in the year MDXLVI.

DECREE CONCERNING ORIGINAL SIN

That our Catholic faith, without which it is impossible to please God, may,
errors being purged away, continue in its own perfect and spotless
integrity, and that the Christian people may not be carried about with
every wind of doctrine; whereas that old serpent, the perpetual enemy of
mankind, amongst the very many evils with which the Church of God is in
these our times troubled, has also stirred up not only new, but even old,
dissensions touching original sin, and the remedy thereof; the sacred and
holy, ecumenical and general Synod of Trent,--lawfully assembled in the
Holy Ghost, the three same legates of the Apostolic See presiding
therein,--wishing now to come to the reclaiming of the erring, and the
confirming of the wavering,--following the testimonies of the sacred [Page 22]
Scriptures, of the holy Fathers, of the most approved councils, and the
judgment and consent of the Church itself, ordains, confesses, and declares
these things touching the said original sin:

1. If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he
had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the
holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred,
through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of
God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him,
and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the
empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam,
through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for
the worse; let him be anathema.

2. If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured
himself alone, and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice,
received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us
also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only
transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not
sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema:--whereas he
contradicts the apostle who says; By one man sin entered into the world,
and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have
sinned.

3. If any one asserts, that this sin of Adam,--which in its origin is
one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in
each one as his own, --is taken away either by the powers of human nature,
or by any other remedy than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hath reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us
justice, santification, and redemption; or if he denies that the said merit
of Jesus Christ is applied, both to adults and to infants, by the sacrament
of baptism rightly administered in the form of the church; let him be
anathema: For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we
must be [Page 23] saved. Whence that voice; Behold the lamb of God behold him who
taketh away the sins of the world; and that other; As many as have been
baptized, have put on Christ.

4. If any one denies, that infants, newly born from their mothers'
wombs, even though they be sprung from baptized parents, are to be
baptized; or says that they are baptized indeed for the remission of sins,
but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam, which has need of
being expiated by the laver of regeneration for the obtaining life
everlasting,--whence it follows as a consequence, that in them the form of
baptism, for the remission of sins, is understood to be not true, but
false, --let him be anathema. For that which the apostle has said, By one
man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon
all men in whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as
the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it. For, by
reason of this rule of faith, from a tradition of the apostles, even
infants, who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this
cause truly baptized for the remission of sins, that in them that may be
cleansed away by regeneration, which they have contracted by generation.
For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God.

5. If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or
even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of
sin is not taken away; but says that it is only rased, or not imputed; let
him be anathema. For, in those who are born again, there is nothing that
God hates; because, There is no condemnation to those who are truly buried
together with Christ by baptism into death; who walk not according to the
flesh, but, putting off the old man, and putting on the new who is created
according to God, are made inno-[Page 24]cent, immaculate, pure, harmless, and
beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ; so that
there is nothing whatever to retard their entrance into heaven. But this
holy synod confesses and is sensible, that in the baptized there remains
concupiscence, or an incentive (to sin); which, whereas it is left for
our exercise, cannot injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by
the grace of Jesus Christ; yea, he who shall have striven lawfully shall be
crowned. This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin, the
holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be
called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but
because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.

This same holy Synod doth nevertheless declare, that it is not its
intention to include in this decree, where original sin is treated of, the
blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the mother of God; but that the
constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV., of happy memory, are to be observed,
under the pains contained in the said constitutions, which it renews.